Transcriber's note: Spelling and punctuation are sometimes erratic. A few obvious misprints have been corrected, but in general the original spelling and typesetting conventions have been retained. Accents are inconsistent, and have not been standardised. Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals. This issue contains the index to Volume 64. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCXCVIII. DECEMBER, 1848. VOL. LXIV. CONTENTS. MRS HEMANS, 641 ON THE MISERIES OF IRELAND, AND THEIR REMEDIES, 658 THE CAXTONS. PART VIII., 672 REPUBLICAN FIRST-FRUITS, 687 PROPHECIES FOR THE PRESENT, 703 SIGISMUND FATELLO, 714 THE "GREEN HAND."--A "SHORT" YARN, 743 EASTLAKE'S LITERATURE OF THE FINE ARTS, 753 INDEX, 767 EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET; AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._ SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH. MRS HEMANS. Felicia Hemans and the poetesses of England! Such would probably be the form in which the toast would run, if literary toasts were the fashion, or such a mode of compliment the one exactly suited to the case. Not that we would venture positively to assert that Mrs Hemans stands at the head of our poetesses, the first absolutely in point of genius,--though there is but one name, that of Joanna Baillie, which occurs to us, at the moment, as disputing with hers that pre-eminence,--but because she, in a more complete manner than any other of our poetesses, represents the mind, the culture, the feelings, and character, of the English gentlewoman. Her piety, her resignation, her love of nature and of home,--that cheerfulness easily moved by little incidents, that sadness into which reflection almost always settled,--all speak of the cultivated woman bred under English skies, and in English homes. Her attachment to the privacy of life, her wise dislike and avoidance of the _éclat_ of literary renown, and the dull, dry, fever-heat of fashionable circles, tend to complete her qualifications as a fitting representative of her fair countrywomen. The cultivation of her mind, in its weakness as well as elegance, savoured, perhaps, too much of what we are compelled to call feminine. Alive at all times to beauty in all its forms, to music, to tender and imaginative thought, she seems to have been almost equally averse to whatever bore the aspect of an analysis of feeling, or an approach to a severe investigation of truth. Present her with the beautiful, but spare her all scientific dissection of it.